Nikki DeFauw has three children in Adams Elementary School. If the Davenport Community School District votes next week to close Grant and Johnson elementary schools, the ensuing realignment of school boundaries will result in her kids being sent to Harrison next fall.

Thinking Big

The biggest change atop Museum Hill in west-central Davenport has been the opening of the Putnam Museum's new 270-seat IMAX theatre, with its contemporary glass-dominated architecture dwarfing the adjacent history-and-natural-science museum and the Davenport Museum of Art.
It's shorter than a one-night stand - well, it should be, anyway - but it's not like that at all. "You're committed to them for seven minutes, and that's it," said Susan Esser. What Esser is describing is Seven-Minute Dating, a service she started a year ago to help singles meet each other with little commitment.
Steve Banks has a jovial intensity, and while he takes his art seriously, it's not too seriously. When I tried to maneuver around one painting to avoid damaging it, Banks said, "You're not going to hurt anything but yourself.

Rapid Rip-Off

With the filing deadline for income taxes in less than three weeks, a lot of people are turning to professional tax preparers to assist with their returns. But those services can come at a steep cost, and a recent study found that they're also steering hundreds of millions of dollars away from recipients of the Earned Income Tax Credit.
A rich Quad Cities cultural history was restored last weekend. Thanks to Homefolks Communications and Ebony Expressions and their Jazz & Blues Restoration Project, three of the Quad Cities' greatest born-and-bred musicians were invited to provide workshops and concerts March 7 through 9: saxophonist Franz Jackson, drummer Francis Clay, and pianist and educator Bill Bell.
In the name of security, Iowa-American Water Company has asked for and received a rate hike without going through the normal rate-case process - and without customers knowing what they're paying for. Between the terrorist attacks of September 11 and November, Iowa-American spent approximately $900,000 on security measures, according to K.
Now in their sixth year, the River Cities' Reader's Best of the Quad Cities awards have become an institution, and some of our winners are approaching that status, too. Biaggi's, for example, swept the major restaurant categories and ended up with five awards, in only its second year of operation.
In its 20-year history, Mississippi Valley Neighborhood Housing Service stayed focused on a single east-Davenport neighborhood. When it was awarded Community Development Financial Institution status by the U.S. Treasury in August, its mission and target area grew to seven counties, extending north to Clinton and south to Keokuk and reaching across the river to Rock Island County.
Some Iowa legislators are targeting lenders who change outrageous fees and interest rates (typically higher than 12 percent annually). A handful of bills in the Iowa General Assembly have been or are about to be introduced, and some might have a decent chance of passage.

Pages